The Mountaineers (16-7, 5-5 Big East) led for the final 35 minutes of play, taking the lead for good on a basket by Ruoff with 15:30 left in the game. West Virginia went into halftime with a 42-27 lead.

West Virginia’s hard-nosed defense and efficient offensive play led the Mountaineers to an 86-59 victory over Providence Saturday afternoon at the WVU Coliseum.

The Mountaineers (16-7, 5-5), snapped their two-game conference losing streak by getting back to basics on their home court as they held the high-scoring Friars (14-9, 6-5) to their second lowest scoring output of the season.

”Our defense was so much better. We created offense from our defense,” West Virginia coach Bob Huggins pointed out. ”How many runouts did we get? How many open looks and layups did we get because we created from our defense?’

It, of course, is the prolonged shooting slump West Virginia’s senior guard has battled since before Christmas. In the Mountaineers’ last 11 games – or since he exploded for a school-record nine 3-pointers in a Dec. 23 game against Radford – Ruoff has been pedestrian at best and sometimes downright awful.

But on Saturday, Ruoff came up huge, making six of his seven 3-point tries and sparking West Virginia to a much-needed 86-59 rout of Providence in front of a crowd of 11,091 at the Coliseum.